(a) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a battery system, capable of improving efficiency of a battery used in a vehicle through cooling or heating of the battery.
(b) Background Art
Recently, efforts have been made in various industrial fields for replacing an internal combustion engine with an electrical engine to help solve environmental problems. Here, a battery serves as an alternative to fuel in the electrical engine and should maintain an optimal state of a fuel efficiency ratio or durability through increasing and decreasing a temperature of the battery used in the electrical vehicle and a hybrid vehicle.
Many conventional battery cooling and heating technologies are configured to suction air from an interior and an exterior of a vehicle and then transfer the air to the battery for cooling the battery through air convection. In the prior configurations for simultaneously cooling and heating the battery, as described above, a plurality of battery packs and electrical devices may be disposed inside a battery housing. Thus separate ducts may be disposed on a suction portion and a discharging portion for an air flow path for heat exchanging to be defined inside the battery pack and for air flow therethrough.
Further, separate flow channels may be disposed on the exterior of the battery pack for the air flow path to be defined therein and thus, there are limitations to designing the battery system and efficiency of the cooling configuration for the battery may not be achieved.
For example, in case of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2012-006927A, entitled “A battery pack including radial fans”, it relates to a battery pack including radial fans in which the radial fans are arranged such that the input and output direction of cooling air becomes perpendicular to the directions of the cooling air traversing through a plurality of battery cells to design a more efficient the flow path of the cooling air. However, under this configuration of the battery pack, separate channels and ducts for the cooling air flow must be provided, the cooling effect may decrease due to the substantially long cooling air flow.
The items described above are provided just to help in understanding of the background of the present invention, and shall not be construed to admit that they correspond to the technologies already known to those skilled in the art to which the present invention pertains.